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sarakomo 's review for:
Utopia Avenue
by David Mitchell
2020: First off, if you've never read any of David Mitchell's books, do NOT start with this one! You'll be happily playing along with the band in 1960's England for about three quarters of the book, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, you'll be in 19th century Japan without any idea how you got there. It's a trip, not for the faint of heart, that really pays off in the end, but only if you have the background of previous Mitchell books to sustain the context.
Mitchell sets up each of his chapters to alternate between "the beginning" and "the end" of each scene. It feels like there are about twenty vignettes each chapter, and only at the end do you realize the complete through-line. It's disorienting in moments, and beautifully revealing in others. Overall, it's not the most successful way to tell a story (as always, in my humble opinion). There's a heart wrenching two-chapter foray into one of the main character's grief, that completely pulls the reader out of the rest of the plot. It makes me wonder what Mitchell must have suffered through while working on this book. It's beautiful and true and very impactful, but it doesn't jive with the rest of the book.
If you, like me, have spent a lot of time in the Mitchellverse, you're going to love this book. It doesn't overtake Black Swan Green or Cloud Atlas as my favorites of his works, but it's certainly up there. It's so fun recognizing the spontaneous characters and brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) mentions that callback to his previous works. I read a review calling Utopia Avenue the third in a trilogy with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks, and I would definitely agree with that. I'd recommend even a reread of one of them before jumping straight in.
As much as this was a great escape into the Mitchellverse, it seemed completely out of touch with the world in which it was published. Maybe because I'm coming off of just having finished The Vanishing Half, which was a period piece that did a great job in connecting its plot to the present day. Mitchell relies on fun namedrops to sustain a lot of the plot in the last quarter of the book, which gets old and repetitive. None of the famous characters DO anything, and they barely affect the plot; they are just there for a gimmicky jolt.
Mitchell sets up each of his chapters to alternate between "the beginning" and "the end" of each scene. It feels like there are about twenty vignettes each chapter, and only at the end do you realize the complete through-line. It's disorienting in moments, and beautifully revealing in others. Overall, it's not the most successful way to tell a story (as always, in my humble opinion). There's a heart wrenching two-chapter foray into one of the main character's grief, that completely pulls the reader out of the rest of the plot. It makes me wonder what Mitchell must have suffered through while working on this book. It's beautiful and true and very impactful, but it doesn't jive with the rest of the book.
If you, like me, have spent a lot of time in the Mitchellverse, you're going to love this book. It doesn't overtake Black Swan Green or Cloud Atlas as my favorites of his works, but it's certainly up there. It's so fun recognizing the spontaneous characters and brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) mentions that callback to his previous works. I read a review calling Utopia Avenue the third in a trilogy with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks, and I would definitely agree with that. I'd recommend even a reread of one of them before jumping straight in.
As much as this was a great escape into the Mitchellverse, it seemed completely out of touch with the world in which it was published. Maybe because I'm coming off of just having finished The Vanishing Half, which was a period piece that did a great job in connecting its plot to the present day. Mitchell relies on fun namedrops to sustain a lot of the plot in the last quarter of the book, which gets old and repetitive. None of the famous characters DO anything, and they barely affect the plot; they are just there for a gimmicky jolt.